Jeff Coffin

Yamaha Performing Artist and saxophonist with Dave Matthews Band Jeff Coffin rejects all labels and categories other than "music" and "musician" when asking how to describe his playing, writing and himself.

Jeff is an internationally recognized saxophonist, bandleader, composer and educator, and has been traveling the globe since the mid-1990's. He is a three-time Grammy Award winner with Bela Fleck & the Flecktones, with whom he began playing in 1997. In July 2008, Jeff began touring with Dave Matthews Band, and officially joined the group in 2009, following the passing of founding member LeRoi Moore.

Jeff is a heavily in-demand Yamaha Performing Artist and Clinician and, since 2001, has presented over 300 music clinics to students of all ages, from Farmington, Maine to Perth, Australia to Johannesburg and Capetown, South Africa, with raving reviews.

Living in Nashville, Tennessee since 1991, Jeff graduated with a music education degree from the University of North Texas in 1990, where he played in the acclaimed One O'Clock Lab Band. Jeff also studied with saxophone great Joe Lovano on a NEA grant, and has been a tireless champion to players of all ages and levels to find their own musical voice.

A number of Jeff's compositions have been published as big band arrangements through the University of Northern Colorado (UNC) Jazz Press, and he has presented them in concerts at many schools. Education continues to be an important part of what Jeff shares with others.

At the 2000 Grammy Awards, in addition to Bela Fleck & the Flecktones winning a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Jazz Recording (Outbound), Jeff's tune Zona Mona (Bela Fleck & the Flecktones/Outbound) was nominated for a Grammy for Best Pop Instrumental Composition.

Jeff is also an avid photographer and he sees photographic composition, musical composition and improvisation as going hand in hand.